Wow. The visual design for this game is nothing short of stunning.
Without getting into a whole dissection analysis, I’ll say I think the moods and themes that they’ve been able to coax out of their graphics are absolutely unreal. Even if they only managed to decide on (or stumble upon!) this particular look after countless experiments and revisions, I feel like they must’ve had (or developed) such a strong artistic vision for it. Every single one of its elements seems so well-aligned to achieve the desired overall effect.
That kind of synchronization lends an experience unbelievable purity. I don’t think there’s any particular part of the footage that really pops out as being strikingly impressive or unique, but the whole thing together immediately draws you in, and very deeply. It’s immersive, to say the least. Their judicious, surgical use of audio really seals the deal; it all sounds almost predictable, but I’d argue that this is because it all feels exactly right.
This degree of potency in a finely-tuned, uniform aesthetic makes it more than just evocative. I would say that there’s a very high-level process of abstract communication occuring. I’m aware of how vague and pretentious that sounds, but hear me out on this and I’ll make this into something concrete: Just by quickly skipping through that one video, and watching only a handful of snippets from it, each no more than a few seconds long, I feel like they were able to convey virtually the entire setting to me, and how “I” (the player character) fit into it. And, they explained it in a way that actually makes me want to know more. They’ve told me about their entire world and I still want to investigate further. I don’t think “compelling” even begins to describe what’s going on here. Keep in mind that this was all accomplished with nearly zero use of language. I watched less than half a minute of video footage and I’m already fascinated. It doesn’t hurt that the carefully-constructed environment that they’ve chosen to portray appears to be an interesting one.
Without my knowing anything about the game outside of this thread’s title and the fragments I watched of that video, the game told me: “You are alone in an intriguingly, achingly mysterious, but remarkably disquieting, old future; an old, sci-fi/space future; you’re an ordinary person all alone in a large, empty, foreboding space station/spaceship/sci-fi building, filled only with metaphorical ghosts (the pointed, strange, and unnerving lack of other people), and uncontrolled, unsympathetic, ominous, threatening technology… and you are not safe there.” I read everything about the game afterwards, and (even for me) it’s hard to believe how close my immediate initial impression comes to the actual description of the game. I’m not trying to brag or anything! I just think it’s pretty incredible what they’ve already achieved with this game in its alpha form.
… Uhm, so, that said, there’s a reason I had to skip through the video: I think this will probably be too scary for me to play. Oh well! :lol: